F/X According to Oanda (2012), the current rates for the different currencies against the Euro are as follows:

Current Rate

USD

JPY

CHY

The current rate is of August 15, 2012 and this is compared against the rate on August 12, 2011.

There are a number of factors that go into currency exchange rates. One factor is the expected change in interest rates. This is known as interest rate parity. Under this theory, the "interest rate differential between two countries is equal to the differential between the forward exchange rate and the spot exchange rate." Interest rate parity is forward-looking, but if it had held there would have been some significant change in the interest rates between the European Central Bank and these other nations. That was not the case. The decline in the Euro appears to have occurred even though interest rates in these countries...

Interest rate parity was a bad predictor of value.
China is a different matter altogether. It is worth mentioning since it has a different regime, but of course for a business the yuan is worthless. It is only traded in China and Hong Kong, and its value is tied to the U.S. dollar. The PRC would like the yuan to be a relevant currency like the USD and the yen, but this is not the case in the real world. With trading only in the PRC and its SAR in Hong Kong, this allows the Chinese government to fix trading in the yuan within a daily band, tied to the U.S. dollar. The band has been widened once or twice in the past few years (BBC, 2012), but the yuan remains a currency that is not subject to free float, whose value does not reflect intrinsic value. As a result, the yuan's movements are within the context of the USD movements,…